ENERGY OPTIMIZATION OF SERBIAN BUILDINGS WITH PV PANELS AND DISTRICT HEATING SYSTEM

Abstract

Nowadays, for clean and renewable electricity generation, solar photovoltaic technologies is the best option. Solar energy has become a promising alternative source due to its advantages: abundance, pollution free and renewability. In this paper, the possibilities to decrease energy consumption of Serbian residential buildings are analyzed. The building with district space heating and electrical energy generated by PV system is investigated. The major aim is to determine the area of the PV array in order to minimize primary energy consumption. The residential buildings with variable thermal insulation thickness and variable electricity consumption are investigated in order to achieve zero- (ZNEB) or positive-net energy building (PNEB). The buildings are simulated in EnergyPlus environment. Open Studio plug-in in Google SketchUp was used for buildings design, Hooke-Jeeves algorithm for optimization and GENOPT software for software execution control. The obtained results gave the optimal size of PV array.